Mission: Impossible's Rebecca Ferguson climbs aboard The Girl On The Train

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation's Rebecca Ferguson has been confirmed for the movie adaptation of Paula Hawkins' novel The Girl On The Train. She will star opposite Sicario actress Emily Blunt, who will be playing the film's main protagonist.

It will focus on 32-year-old divorced alcoholic Rachel Watson, who gets the train to work every day, pretending to upkeep her commute so her housemate doesn't realise that she's been unemployed for two years. But one day, she witnesses a murder during her journey and soon becomes entangled in the ensuing investigation, as she tries to figure out what really happened.

Blunt will be playing Rachel, while Ferguson will be joining the project as Anna, the former mistress and then wife of Rachel's ex-husband Tom. Even though Rachel is the book's lead character, the novel is told from three different viewpoints and the third female lead is yet to be cast. However, there is a lot of speculation that Fantastic Four's Kate Mara is in talks to fill the role. Other stars that have been tipped to potentially feature have included Carey Mulligan and Anna Kendrick. Mulligan worked with producer Marc Platt when he made Drive and similarly Kendrick worked with him on Into The Woods alongside Blunt, so there are certainly ties to both actresses that could mean they might be cast.

Tate Taylor (The Help) is directing the adaptation, while Chloe, and Men, Women & Children screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson will be writing the script. It will be released sometime in 2016. DreamWorks acquired the rights to make a film from the book, even before it was published in January 2015. The novel debuted at number one on the The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers list when it was released, and remained there for 13 consecutive weeks, and spent 20 weeks at the top of the UK hardback book chart.

Dubbed as the next Gone Girl, the film version will take place in the US despite the novel being set in the UK, something that author Hawkins admits she's not worried about. "I'm not really concerned about the repositioning as I think it is the type of story that could take place in any commuter town," she told the Sunday Times in July. While there seems to be a trend of bestselling authors becoming involved in the big-screen interpretations "I don't want to be involved... let them get on with it."

Deadline recently reportedly that Ferguson was one of the actresses on the shortlist to be cast as the female lead opposite Channing Tatum in 20<sup>th Century Fox's comic book movie Gambit